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So you’ve had a mental illness and think you’ve licked it? Well, if so, you are in for a surprise because no one will ever let you forget your past. You will go through the rest of your life being constantly evaluated by your friends and questioned by people who’ve only heard that you had a mental illness but they don’t have a clue as to whether or not what they heard is true.
Don’t even think about returning to work because you will be a rare person if you make it to an interview because as soon as they perform a background check on you and find out about your prior mental illness you are dead meat. If you do get an interview and don’t volunteer the information about your prior mental illness, you won’t be hired because you didn’t reveal the information. If you do reveal the information, you won’t be hired because of some other fictitious reason fabricated by the hiring company. Mind you, it is against the law for a prospective employer to ask about such things as a mental illness but who the hell follows the law these days?
Speaking of employment, I failed to mention returning to work at your previous employer where you were working when you came down with your mental illness. If you were thinking that you would be able to return to your old job, if you ever became well, once again you will have been wrong. They won’t hire you regardless of any law, or whether or not you have recovered from your illness. Now if you had cancer, heart disease, paralysis, or some other debilitating disease they will take you back because the government will compensate them for hiring a disabled person.
Strange how the system, both corporate and social, works in our country. If you have cancer and beat it, no one continues to judge you because you had cancer at one time in your life. But for some reason a mental illness has a life-long stigma that follows you around like stink on a skunk. The average person has nothing more than an incorrect perception about mental illnesses. One in five people in the United States is touched by mental illness but the majority of citizens are clueless. They still live in the dark ages when anyone remotely suspected of having a mental illness was incarcerated in a dungeon for the remainder of their life and all but forgotten until they either died, or actually became mentally ill, although they were sane and well when they were first incarcerated.
The only way any of this injustice will change in our society is if and when state and federal laws are implemented with teeth sharp enough to take a painful bite out of corporate America that is guilty of these discriminating practices. I can tell you that the chance of this ever happening is slim and none. I say this with professional knowledge and experience, not just from a passionate dissertation. I was appointed by a former Governor of Virginia to the State Board of Mental Health, Mental Retardation, and Substance Abuse for a period of three years. This issue was discussed numerous times in our public board meetings but no action was ever sanctioned to change these discriminating injustices. We can’t rely on a member of our Virginia State General Assembly, or a member of Congress to champion a bill that would end these unjust practices because unless they, or a member of their family, become mentally ill they will just continue to ignore this subject as they have always done. My heart goes out to all who have experienced, continue to experience, or finally beat a mental illness because your hell will never end.